Haunting
by thetimba
Summary: Harry asks Murphy to check out a Haunted House. Except it not just a house. And it's not just haunted. bookverse. Set some point after White Knight.
1. Chapter 1

"You want me to go to a haunted house?" Murphy asked. Then after a brief pause, she added, "With you. On Halloween."

"Not with me. FOR me," I corrected. "And it's a _Haunted_ House,"

"What's the difference?"

"Capital H."

Murphy sighed and shot a look up at me through her bangs that made me feel about six inches tall. It's a more impressive feat than it sounds, as I stand about a foot higher than her.

"Murph, please," I looked at her as earnestly as I could. "I really need your help on this. If I go in there, it'll be like...sending a nuclear bomb in. If something's up, you've got enough experience to know, and if not, there's no damage done. I don't want to risk denizens of the after-life assuming that I've come to do them bodily harm. Er, non-bodily harm."

"And why would the ghosts think you're out to harm them, Dresden?" Murphy has an amazing number of looks. This one demanded explanation, or I might be facing bodily harm.

"That thing coupla years ago," I muttered darkly, remembering. "Where I might have possibly dealt with some necromancers and their legions of zombies and ghostly hordes. Thus killing them all."

Murphy knew what had gone down that Halloween, basically. In the way that I'd told her that I'd "handled" the final reunion of Kremmler U. I'd left it vague for one simple reason. It had sucked. A lot. Several people had died, and I'd come face to face with a side of me I didn't know I had and that I wasn't comfortable with existing.

After what seemed like hours, Murphy sighed again. "Fine. I'll go. What, EXACTLY, will I be dealing with in there?"

"Could be anything," I began hesitantly. "Ghouls, poltergeists, the fae having a laugh at human's expense, demons, zombies..." I stopped at Murphy's dark glare and held up my hands appealingly. "Seriously. The victims I've talked to have been...incoherent."

"You have no idea what's going on in there?" she asked

"None. But I think it's bad, Karrin."

She looked me in the eye for a moment. I must've looked pretty serious because she didn't ask anymore questions, just nodded and rose to leave. "I better get going then."

I stood when she did but slumped back onto my stool once she left, a weight lifting from my shoulders.

See, I really COULDN'T have gone to the house. The magical community tends to be touchy around people like me. You know, people who have, say, killed one Faerie Queen, or attacked the castle of another. Or sent a zombie T-Rex to eat ghosts, or invaded a vampire stronghold. Things like that tend to put others on their guard around you. On the off chance there wasn't anything serious going on, I didn't want to show up and possibly CAUSE something serious.

On the other hand, if there WAS something harming these people, I didn't want whatever it was to be on its guard. I wanted it totally unaware so that when Murphy came back with the information I needed, I could kill it dead. Advantage: Team Dresden. Don't look so shocked. Sometimes I come up with something approaching a plan.

I was still congratulating myself when the phone rang.

"Dresden, I am going to KILL you!"

I moved the receiver away from my ear slightly. Murphy has an impressive bellow. "I'm...sorry?"

"It's not a house. It's a goddamned FOREST, Dresden! A giant fucking FOREST that is trying to eat people!"

"No one mentioned that to me," I said defensively.

I prepared for a verbal ass-kicking. There wasn't one, which made me eye the phone distrustfully. Stupid technology. In the midst of trying to figure out if I'd actually lost the call, or Murphy was so mad at me that she couldn't speak, I realized that the line wasn't actually SILENT. Pressing the phone hard to my ear hard, I tried to separate the background noise from the normal static and Listened. It's harder to Listen over the phone, but it's not impossible, so I blocked out the normal office sounds and focused on the other end of the line.

Heavy breathing, multiple voices shouting. Twigs snapping, something slapping against the phone. Another sound more similar to the static...rustling? The distinctive bark of a discharging firearm. Then there was silence. Murphy was running, and given the extra voices, she had other people with her. She was shooting …

Hell's bells. She was still IN the forest.

I dropped the phone without even attempting to return it to the cradle and bolted toward the front door. Stopping only briefly to don my protective leather duster and grab my staff, blasting rod and keys, I ran to the rescue. My beat up blue Volkswagen beetle kicked up gravel as I gunned it and headed toward the outskirts of town.

So much for my brilliant plan.


	2. Chapter 2

I was standing in front of a giant forest. There was a giant, moving, evil-looking forest in front of me, it had Murphy, and I had no idea how to stop it. Hell, I couldn't even _identify _it, much less kill it.

Every instinct I had was screaming at me to run away. Yeah, I'm a wizard, but I'm a HUMAN wizard, and sometimes biology wants to take over. Also, there'd been a shortage in my training of how to handle man-eating foliage. Anything too big to run over with my car took some planning.

I have two strengths: kicking ass with limited structural damage when I'm well prepared, and blowing shit up when I'm not. Since I had rushed out of the house without so much as an outline, I was going to have to make due with option "B".

So I willed some power into my pentacle amulet, and guided by its pale blue light, I walked into the mouth of the forest

Now, I'm no poet, so when I say I walked in to the mouth of the forest, I mean just that. I stepped over rocks forming jagged teeth, and felt a breathy wind that carried with it the scent of decay_._ I couldn't hear anything except the occasional rustle of leaves. There were no animal sounds, no movement except the branches swaying menacingly above. There was an overwhelming sense of _wrongness _that got stronger the farther I walked in. I don't even want to think about what was causing the sickening squishy noises each time I crept forward.

Legend says that curiosity will kill the cat. Now, I don't know how true that is, but at this rate, it had a pretty good shot at getting me. I couldn't help myself. I looked down. With an almost professional detachment, I noted that blood covered in dirt clumps and pine needles looks remarkably similar to chunky tomato soup. Then I was very noisily sick off to the side.

After I managed to stop heaving, I took a second look, checking for anything that might give me something to work with. There wasn't much, and what there was wasn't pretty. The forest floor was carpeted in shreds of bits of pieces of what possibly could have once been people. However, I wasn't going to discount the fact that perhaps this was where all the fuzzy forest critters had gone. Or even local pets that had wandered too far. My stomach gave a weak quiver, but I managed to keep from gagging.

Then I heard the screaming.

I stopped myself from charging off half-cocked into the forest. Instead, I forced myself to crouch slightly onto the damp earth and dig out a circle in the earth with my staff. Pulling out the locket I kept hidden in a coat pocket, I took out the piece of hair I'd snipped of Murphy ages ago, and made with the magic.

I may not know much about man-eating forests, but I can for damn sure find somebody. It's a fairly simple spell. I just link the location of the person with my sense of smell. I could literally follow my nose to Murph, and whoever else was with her. Elegant? Not really. But it's effective, and I really needed a scent other than fresh corpses.

As soon as I broke the circle, I caught a whiff of Murphy's perfume. Taking another moment to make a complete turn, I headed off in the direction that was strongest.

It didn't take long to run into Murphy and her band of stragglers. They'd made their way into a clearing, and looked like they'd been through hell. Most of them were covered in dirt, and bleeding through what was left of their clothing; Murphy included. There were 10 of them total, the oldest maybe 16 and on down to what looked like a 6 year old. Stars and stones. They were just _kids._

The group was moving in a loose pack with the youngest at the center and Murph standing in front, gun drawn, eyeing her surroundings with distrust.

I called to Murphy before I moved into the clearing, because she had a gun. And she was damn good at putting bullets where she wanted them to go.

"Murph, it's me."

Murphy hardly seemed to move, but in a millisecond her gun was trained on where I was standing, and her eyes narrowed, trying to see through the gloom.

I held my necklace aloft, and took a few slow steps into the clearing.

"Prove it." Murphy's voice was cold.

It took a moment of juggling my staff and light, but I managed to pull a penknife out of my pocket, and prick a hole in my thumb. See, demons don't bleed, and asking one to cut itself can often lead to violence, 'cause if you're asking for proof, they know the game is up.

Murph watched detachedly, until a few drops of blood welled up and dripped to the ground. Then she lowered her gun, and her shoulders slumped and she let her head fall forward for just a second, showing one moment of weakness. I ignored it. She'd worked hard to earn her tough-as-nails reputation, and didn't like to be reminded that she was, on occasion, in need of help.

"What's the damage?" I asked as I walked forward. The kids edged back behind Murphy.

Murphy gave me a weary smile. She looked tired, way too tired to have been here for only an hour or two. I checked my watch. Ok, 8 hours. Or 10. I glared at my watch as it sped forward through another hour, and then rocketed back 3. I turned my attention back to Murphy and decided not to mention the time loop yet.

"I found these kids right after I got here," she began. "Killed something, and we've been trying to find our way out since."

"No problem," I said breezily. "This way."

"Maybe you didn't hear me right, Dresden," Murphy said with a hint of annoyance. "We've been trying to get out of here for hours."

"But you didn't have _this_," I said, pulling out a bit of chalk with a flourish. "I marked all the trees I walked by. Let's get out of here."

"Lets," Murphy agreed. "C'mon kids. Follow the man with the glowstick."


End file.
